“For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, to love and to cherish, and to hold till death do us part, I now pronounce you, “Cambridge Rindge and Latin School,” reads the very first sentence of the Register Forum. In 1977, the schools of Rindge Tech and Cambridge High and Latin were merged to create the Cambridge Rindge and Latin school. Their respective newspapers—The Rindge Register, and The Cambridge High and Latin Forum—also merged, taking the last word from each: the Register Forum.
Throughout the late 70s and 80s, opinionated and politically charged pieces became commonplace. One piece from the 1980s addressed drug abuse stereotypes, another focused on AIDS, and a third depicted Ronald Reagan’s head on a chicken. For much of its history, the Rindge Register had been relatively silent in regards to current events, with issues almost exclusively consisting of articles about sports or student life. This shift emerged from movements involving large-scale criticism of the government, like the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement.
The 90s continued on this trajectory, and by then, the Register Forum was looking pretty similar to the newspaper we know today—published once a month, with Opinion and Around School sections. Racism, sexism, war, and class were now regularly discussed topics. A piece from 2002, a transcription of a student’s speech titled ‘Stop and Ask Yourself,’ reads: “So I challenge you today to analyze yourself and ask: Am I a sexist? Am I a racist? Am I a homophobe?
After 9/11, the U.S. no longer resided in a safe, isolated, western bubble—the public began to realize that U.S. actions could cause blowback on American soil. Foreign affairs became a subject of serious concern. “Other nations of the world have begun to recognize the arrogance demonstrated by the Bush administration, rallying against the United States’ abuse of power,” states an opinion piece. Above, a political cartoon, titled ‘Too Nosy,’ depicts George Bush stabbing a smaller country with an elongated nose, saying “Shut up, weakling!”
The 2010s culminated in the creation of our website in 2017 by Editor-in-Chief Grace Ramsdell. “Taking the Register Forum online this year will be an important next step in the evolution of the paper,” she wrote in an editorial. “We should not limit our student journalists to reporting on a monthly cycle…We should not limit our readership to those who happen to get to school at the right time to pick up a print copy on our distribution day.”
This newspaper has existed for 134 years, and students have access to issues dating to its beginning in 1891. There’s something magical about reading the banal, everyday writing of people your age, who attended the same school, who read the same newspaper—but were living through World War I, the Great Depression, or the Vietnam War. These musings show what summaries cannot—they show the human condition. So next time you write for the Register Forum—just know that you’re making history.
This article also appears in our June 2025 print edition.
